Six million electric cars (battery-electric and plug-in hybrid) are likely to be shipped globally in 2022, up from 4 million in 2021, a Gartner report showed on Thursday.
The number of global public EV chargers will rise to 2.1 million units in 2022, up from 1.6 million units in 2021.
The market research firm forecasts that electric cars will represent 95 percent of total EV shipments in 2022, and the remainder will be split between buses, vans, and heavy trucks.
For the full year 2021, Tesla alone delivered 936,172 vehicles, just short of the promised 1 million vehicles but still an increase of 87 percent over the previous year.
At ‘COP26’ in November 2021, the Zero Emission Vehicle Transition Council agreed that vehicle manufacturers would commit to selling only zero-emission vehicles by 2040 and earlier in leading markets, putting pressure on the automotive sector to prepare for the decarbonization in transportation.
“EVs are an important powertrain technology to help reduce CO2 emissions from the transportation sector,” said Jonathan Davenport, research director at Gartner.
The ongoing shortage of chips will impact the production of EVs in 2022, and while shipments of vans and trucks are currently small, their shipments will grow rapidly as commercial owners see the financial and environmental benefit of electrifying their fleets,- Davenport added.
With China imposing a mandate on automakers requiring that EVs make up 40 percent of all sales by 2030 and automakers establishing new factories for manufacturing electric cars, Greater China will account for 46 percent of global EV shipments in 2022.
Western Europe is on pace to ship 1.9 million units in 2022, ranking No 2 in EV shipments.
North America is expected to be the third-highest region in shipments at 855.3 thousand EVs in 2022.
“The EU’s plans to cut CO2 emissions from cars by 55 per cent and vans by 50 per cent by 2030 is a catalyst to the uptake of EVs in Europe,” said Davenport.
To foster the transition to EVs, automotive manufacturers will have to address several factors such as lowering the price of EVs and batteries, recycling EV batteries, and offering a wider selection of vehicle models.
“Additionally, a major issue that must be addressed is lack of fast-charging availability for home and public charging,” said Davenport.
